01/05/2026
January 5, 2026
Dorthee 1929-2025
WENDELL- Born Dorothy of the Thompson family of Five Islands, Maine, Dorthee grew up primarily in Michigan, where her father taught at a private school, and spent summers on the coast of Maine. She met Nehemiah Boynton in Georgia, where he was a naval cadet at the end of WWII. Also a Five Islands Maine native, though they had never met before, he bravely asked her out, even though her father was the officer in charge of cadet discipline.
After one year of college at Simmons, Dorothy dropped out to marry Nehemiah, a newly frocked Congregational minister, and have the first of her four children, giving birth to them in Nehemiah’s various early parishes. One child, Paul, died tragically of leukemia at the age of eleven. When her youngest child reached the age of twelve, Dorothy returned to college, completing her BA at American International College,in Springfield, Massachusetts, then went on to complete her PhD in Clinical Psychology at the University of Rhode Island in 1976, writing her dissertation on agency/communication balance and its relationship to s*x role stereotyping. Residing in Connecticut she established her own practice as a therapist.
In 1980 at the age of fifty Dor moved to Northampton MA and joined vibrant le***an feminist and progressive communities. Rather than practice as a therapist, she joined a women’s clothing collective and crafted objects from Maine sea treasures. She participated in social change activities and protests, as well as groups studying the philosophies of Mary Daly and Sarah Hoagland.
The le***an feminist thinking on the power of words led Dor to reframe herself in 1990, legally setting aside both her father’s name and her former husband’s. She kept the “Dor” and re-spelled it with an added “thee” in a nod to the Quaker testimony of simplicity. As the State could never tolerate leaving blanks blank, her driver’s license read “ nfn Dorthee”, and even after her death, the bureaucratic morph of “nfn “(no first name) had to be explained to every clerk of officialdom.
Attracted to the le***an strain of the area’s hippie back-to-the-land movement and the beauty of the wooded hilltowns, she followed friends to the unique community melding of Wendell in 1989, where she helped build a 380 sq. ft. home of her own design. MAC Construction, a women’s business, supervised the work parties of women volunteers, mostly le***an, that pounded in the nails and lifted the walls. The little house became her place of peace as well as a great source of pride and satisfaction. Her own place. In the years that followed, that peace was only disturbed by the untimely death of her daughter Grace in 1993, deeply felt by Dor.
While she made at least annual summer visits to still-beloved coastal Maine, the town of Wendell claimed her heart in her last decades. She was an active volunteer where needed, tending the Free Box overflow, spending time in the library, shepherding the Good Neighbor’s food pantry through change, and giving rides when called in her teal Toyota “Duckie.” She made friends all across the town and its many communities, especially the town le***ans, sure to appear at regular potlucks and workparties.
It was a great unanticipated joy for Dor to reconnect with Helen Beebe, whom she had met long ago (1969) in Stockbridge, when they were both married (to men.) They began a long-distance commuting relationship that included dancing in the kitchen and being slobbered on by Helen’s bulldog Pumpkin. The too-brief partnership continued until Helen’s death in 1998.
Dorthee was connected to the area progressive movement as well as Wendell’s. From 2001 to 2014, she vigiled weekly at the Orange Veterans Park with North Quabbin Women in Black to oppose United States wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the military industrial complex. From 2006 to 2013, when the Entergy Corporation closed the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, Dorthee was arrested tens of times with the Shut It Down Affinity Group encouraging the end of Vermont Yankee. Dorthee produced her broadside publication Witness around 2010 as a chronicle of community nonviolent political action.
In Dor’s last years she replaced her much-loved Toyota with a super Cadillac of a walker, able almost daily to perambulate out to the mailbox and quite often across the street to listen to elder friends who needed to be listened to. For a therapist who didn’t practice, she did an astounding lot of therapy. The world now mostly came to her, not only via NPR but regular calls from out of the country, from her children and her many, many friends. She became, at last, Wendell’s Eldest Citizen.
Her decline this Autumn was rapid, over a several month period with a fall and then a stroke. Once she got home from the hospitals, at her insistence, her journey into death was a nine-night wonder, surrounded by friends and loved ones. She eased out in her sleep Dec. 28.
At age 96 Dor had outlived her parents, all of her siblings, two children, an ex-husband, an ex-partner, a partner, and her cat Olivia. She is survived by Son Carter Boynton (wife Patricia, Fort Myers, FL), Daughter Charlotte Boynton (husband Antonio Sanfilippo, Alexandria, VA); grandchildren Paul Boynton (Alexandria, VA) and Michelle Manches, (husband, Andrew Manches, Lake Forest, CA); Great grandchildren, Amelia and Felix Manches ( Lake Forest, CA) and a large circle of friends.
Her remains were interred on Jan. 5 at Wendell’s Osgood Cemetery. A Celebration of Life for family and friends will be held in the Spring in Wendell.
For the family, Kaymarion Raymond
